Stationary Engine House, Camden Town, 1838

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Stationary Engine House, Camden Town, 1838. A lithograph showing construction work underway on the London and Birmingham Railway, detailing the 'egcentric for shifting rail', the 'locomotive engine house' and the 'chimnies of Stationary Engine House'. The building of the London to Birmingham Railway devastated the north London area of Camden Town and made many families homeless. In Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens compared the building work to 'the shock of a great earthquake . . . Traces of its course were visible on every side. Houses were knocked down, streets broken through and stopped; deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps of earth and clay thrown up.'